This monograph was originally published by the Army War College under the title Lying To Ourselves: Dishonesty in the Army Profession and is republished with permission. Read it in its original form here. It deserves to be noted that the described themes and dynamics are not solely limited to the specific military service being examined.

Read Part One here.

By Dr. Leonard Wong and Dr. Stephen J. Gerras

Downrange

One might expect that ethical boundaries are more plainly delineated in a combat environment—the stakes are higher, and the mission is more clearly focused. Discussions with officers, however, revealed that many of the same issues in the garrison environment also emerge in combat. For example, a senior officer described how the combat mission can lead to putting the right “spin” on reports: “We got so focused on getting bodies to combat that we overlooked a lot of issues like weight control, alcohol, or PT.” Not surprisingly, directed training is also often sidestepped in theater. One captain spoke of trying to complete mandatory Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Program (SHARP) training:

“We needed to get SHARP training done and reported to higher headquarters, so we called the platoons and told them to gather the boys around the radio and we said, ‘Don’t touch girls.’ That was our quarterly SHARP training.”

But stretching the truth downrange often extends beyond compliance with mandatory training. A major described how Green 2 sensitive item reports were submitted early every morning. Despite the usual 100 percent accountability, however, it was obvious that it could not have been conducted to standard since nobody ever knocked on their doors to check weapon serial numbers. Another officer related how supply accountability in a combat zone could be manipulated by misrepresenting the truth:

“We found ways to beat the system. You show up in country and you get a layout and immediately what do you do? You do a shortage annex for everything. So that way the Army—with an infinite budget in country—would replenish your product [even though] the unit never really lost the equipment in the beginning.”

Discussions with senior officers revealed other examples of bending the truth. One colonel stated that, “The cost of investigating a lost widget isn’t worth the cost of the item; they write it off and later say it was lost to the Pakistanis.” Another colonel stated:

“We were required to inspect 150 polling sites in Iraq (which nobody could possibly ever do) and fill out an elaborate spreadsheet. The spreadsheet was to get validation for higher that you did what they told you to. We gave them what they wanted.”

One frequently provided example of deception at the senior level concerned readiness assessments of partner forces. It was not uncommon for readiness ratings to vary in conjunction with deployment cycles. In other words, the commander’s assessments were not based so much on the counterpart unit capabilities as they were on the American unit stage of deployment. As one colonel explained:

“I show up and [the readiness assessments] go yellow or green to red. I’m ready to leave – they go from yellow to green. We went through the reports with the CG every ninety days. Everyone wanted to believe what they wanted to believe.”

One widespread recurring requirement for junior leaders in Afghanistan and Iraq was the storyboard—a PowerPoint narrative describing unit events and occurrences. One senior officer pointed out, however, that:

“Every contact with the enemy required a storyboard. People did not report enemy contact because they knew the storyboard was useless and they didn’t want to go through the hassle.”

A captain gave his perspective and his eventual approach to providing incomplete and inaccurate storyboards to higher headquarters:

“I understand there is a higher reporting requirement of which I reported verbally, and I did a proper debrief—I wrote it down and then I sent it to them. [But now] I have to combine a bunch of pictures onto a PowerPoint slide. Now I’m doing this storyboard because there’s an IED, because a donkey fell off the mountain, because some dude’s dog came in and I had to shoot it on the COP and now this dude is mad. It became an absolute burden. So what ended up happening was [that] after about the first couple of months, you’re saving your storyboards, and as soon as you had an incident that [was] somewhat similar to what you already had, it became a cut and paste gig. And the quality of the information that you are giving them wasn’t painting the picture for higher as to what was going on. And you can say, “Yes, Lieutenant, you should have done better.” You’re absolutely right. But when I only had 4 hours between this mission and the next, what’s better – spending 15 minutes to make this beautiful storyboard or planning my next operation?”

The attitude of “I don’t need to tell anyone what happened” was also found in other areas where it was perceived that the reporting requirements were too onerous. For example, one officer discussed his unit’s failure to ask permission to respond to indirect fire (IDF):

“Counterfire became a big issue in terms of [the] ability to counterfire when you were receiving IDF. Some companies in our battalion were returning fire without an accurate grid. They got shot at so they shot back. Of course, they were out in the middle of nowhere with a low chance of collateral damage. [But] people in our battalion knew, and just didn’t say anything. I’m not sure how high up people knew, but it was accepted. That was the norm. We’ll just not say anything about it.”

Another area that reflected the malleability of ethical standards was the distribution of cash through the Commander’s Emergency Response Program (CERP). As one senior officer noted, “CERP is not tracked in detail and everyone knows it.” Another colonel observed:

“CERP money is an area where we probably fudge. We gave company commanders a lot of money that we powered down to people who weren’t trained. We probably submitted reports that weren’t accurate.” 

Ethical Fading

At the outset of this monograph, it was brashly declared that most U.S. Army officers routinely lie. It would not be surprising if many uniformed readers raised a skeptical eyebrow at that claim. Indeed, it would not be unusual for nearly all military readers to maintain a self-identity that takes offense with notions of dishonesty or deception. Ironically, though, many of the same people who flinched at that initial accusation of deceit probably yawned with each new example of untruthfulness offered in the preceding pages. “White” lies and “innocent” mistruths have become so commonplace in the U.S. Army that there is often no ethical angst, no deep soul-searching, and no righteous outrage when examples of routine dishonesty are encountered. Mutually agreed deception exists in the Army because many decisions to lie, cheat, or steal are simply no longer viewed as ethical choices.

Behavioral ethics experts point out that people often fail to recognize the moral components of an ethical decision because of ethical fading. Ethical fading occurs when the “moral colors of an ethical decision fade into bleached hues that are void of moral implications.”¹³ Ethical fading allows us to convince ourselves that considerations of right or wrong are not applicable to decisions that in any other circumstances would be ethical dilemmas. This is not so much because we lack a moral foundation or adequate ethics training, but because psychological processes and influencing factors subtly neutralize the “ethics” from an ethical dilemma. Ethical fading allows Army officers to transform morally wrong behavior into socially acceptable conduct by dimming the glare and guilt of the ethical spotlight.

One factor that encourages ethical fading in the Army is the use of euphemisms and obscure phrases to disguise the ethical principles involved in decisions.¹⁴ Phrases such as checking the box and giving them what they want abound and focus attention on the Army’s annoying administrative demands rather than dwelling on the implications of dishonesty in official reports. Indeed, many officers even go as far as to insist that lying to the system can better be described as prioritizing, accepting prudent risk, or simply good leadership.

A more recent and significant development concerning ethical fading is the exponential growth in the number of occasions that an officer is obliged to confirm or verify compliance with requirements. When it comes to requirements for units and individuals, the Army resembles a compulsive hoarder. It is excessively permissive in allowing the creation of new requirements, but it is also amazingly reluctant to discard old demands. The result is a rapid accumulation of directives passed down, data calls sent out, and new requirements generated by the Army. Importantly, the Army relies on leaders to enforce compliance of the increasing amount of requirements and to certify the accuracy of the expanding number of reports sent upward.

The first time that officers sign an OER support form authenticating a counseling session that never happened or check a box saying, “I have read the above requirements” when they really only glanced at the 1,800-word IA acceptable use policy, they might feel a tinge of ethical concern. After repeated exposure to the burgeoning demands and the associated need to put their honor on the line, however, officers become ethically numb. Eventually, their signature and word become tools to maneuver through the Army bureaucracy rather than symbols of integrity and honesty.¹⁵ This desensitization dilutes the seriousness of an officer’s word and allows what should be an ethical decision to fade into just another way the Army does business. To make matters worse, technological advances and the cumulative effects of time have led to today’s officers facing a much larger amount of information to corroborate than their predecessors.

Ethical fading is also influenced by the psychological distance from an individual to the actual point of dishonesty or deception. Lying, cheating, and stealing become easier to choose when there are more steps between an officer and the dishonest act—the greater the distance, the greater the chance for ethical fading.¹⁶ Thus, most officers would be extremely uncomfortable telling their rater face-to-face that their unit completed ARFORGEN pre-deployment NBC training when they, in fact, did not. Those same officers, however, would probably be more comfortable conveying the same mistruth via a block checked on the ARFORGEN checklist. Likewise, a digital, instead of handwritten, signature on a sponsorship form attesting that an officer was briefed on the sponsorship program prior to PCSing—when they were not—broadens the separation between the officer and the dishonest act. Even the Army’s ubiquitous PowerPoint charts provide briefers the ability to focus on intricate color-coded metrics and thus distance themselves from the inaccurate or ambiguous information the metrics may be conveying.

The psychological distance between a person and the consequences of a dishonest act can also influence ethical fading. A moral decision can lose its ethical overtones if the eventual repercussions of such a choice are either unknown or minimized. For example, the explanation of an officer concerning inaccurate storyboards is illustrative of the common perception that much of the information submitted upward disappears into the ether of the Army bureaucracy:

“Where do the story boards go? They’re going to [a] magic storyboard heaven somewhere where there are billions of storyboards that are collected or logged somehow? After doing hundreds of storyboards, I honestly can’t tell you where any of them go. I send them to my battalion level element who does something with them who then sends them to some other element who eventually puts them on a screen in front of somebody who then prints them out and shreds them? I don’t know.”

Dismissing any potential damage that may result from a misleading or incomplete storyboard allows leaders to view the requirement as yet another petty bureaucratic obligation void of any ethical considerations.

Making Excuses

With ethical fading serving to bolster the self-deception that problematic moral decisions are ethics-neutral, any remaining ethical doubts can be overcome by justifications and rationalizations. While discussions with officers revealed a wide assortment of justifications for unethical behavior, one rationalization appears to underlie all other rationalizations— that dishonesty is often necessary because the directed task, the data requested, or the reporting requirement is unreasonable or “dumb.” When a demand is perceived as an irritation or annoyance, a person’s less than honest response almost becomes a compensatory act against the injustice.¹⁷ Officers convince themselves that instead of being unethical, they are really restoring a sense of balance and sanity to the Army. For example, one officer spoke of the distinction he made between useful and useless required reports:

“You can [ask] anybody in this room—the purpose of sending a SALTA or declaring a TIC, CASEVAC—not a MEDEVAC nine lines—we definitely know why we do that stuff and why we’re reporting. And people jump. They’re timely. They’re accurate. . .But some of this stuff is: You need this for why? Show me in the reports guide that we use or wherever [that] this is actually a required report. Because right now it seems like you’re just wasting a unit leader’s time.”

Another officer rationalized how ethical standards should be loosened for requirements perceived as unimportant:

“If it’s a green tab leader that’s asking me for information—the battalion commander, brigade commander, or something the division commander is going to see—then I would sit down and do it. That would be accurate reporting. If it was something that was going into a staff and wasn’t going to drive a critical decision the battalion made in terms of training or something I need to accomplish for a METL task . . . what goes up, goes up. Is it probably a little off? Yeah, there’s a margin of error.”

Finally, one officer, in euphemistic terms, summarized the Army’s tolerance for deception on seemingly meaningless requirements:

“I don’t think it’s that anyone expects you to lie. But I think there is an expectation of—I think the word is—equivocation…I don’t want to say it’s accepted, because that doesn’t sound good or it doesn’t sound right. But I think some expectation of equivocation is accepted on dumb things.”

Two other rationalizations are often used as justifications for dishonesty—mission accomplishment and supporting the troops. With these rationalizations, the use of deceit or submitting inaccurate information is viewed as an altruistic gesture carried out to benefit a unit or its soldiers. Officers reported that they sometimes needed to act as Robin Hood—going outside the ethical boundaries to assist others. As one officer nobly put it:

“I’m just going to “check this box” . . . and if I’m 70% accurate—that’s good enough to 1) keep my guys out of trouble and 2) keep my boss out of trouble so we can keep doing good things for the country.”

One captain recalled an instance where an IED injured a platoon leader and his replacement during a relief in place. The incident required an assessment of possible traumatic brain injury for both lieutenants. The captain explained:

“I falsified the [traumatic brain injury] report that changed a distance from the IED strike [to where] one person was standing. So that way someone didn’t come back down and stick a finger in my CO’s chest and say, “You need to evac that lieutenant right now!” Because in the middle of [a] RIP, that’s not going to happen. If I do that, I’m going to put my boys in bags because they don’t have any leadership. That ain’t happening. I owe the parents of this country more than that.”

Another officer rationalized how funds were deceptively obtained in theater on behalf of the troops:

“It’s odd that in situations that I’ve been in, it’s never been blatant self-interest. It’s never been, “I’m going to get this money so I can buy myself two couches for my office while I’m in Afghanistan.” [Instead], it’s always like—for us, it was hard as hell to get water heaters. For some reason we could not get hot showers for our soldiers. It wasn’t CERP money, but we had to finagle God-knows-how-many organizations to finally get these things and we had to say we’re using this for this, when in fact it was so our guys could have hot showers when they get back off patrol. The truth of the matter is that, at the level that we’re at, a lot of times we gotta get it done and we’re going to find a way to do it.”

Another officer accurately described how the rationalization process softens the sting of dishonesty:

“You feel more comfortable if it’s not for us—if it’s for what we think is the greater good. Like [lying about] all the 350-1 requirements prior to going on block leave. I want my soldiers to go on leave . . . It’s not for me. It’s for the greater good. [But] that doesn’t mean it’s right.”

Rationalizing allows officers to maintain their self-image as a person of integrity despite acts of dishonesty.

Read Part Three.

Leonard Wong is a research professor in the Strategic Studies Institute at the U.S. Army War College. He focuses on the human and organizational dimensions of the military. He is a retired Army officer whose career includes teaching leadership at West Point and serving as an analyst for the Chief of Staff of the Army. His research has led him to locations such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Kosovo, Bosnia, and Vietnam. He has testified before Congress. Dr. Wong’s work has been highlighted in news media such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, New Yorker, CNN, NPR, PBS, and 60 Minutes. Dr. Wong is a professional engineer and holds a B.S. from the U.S. Military Academy and an M.S. and Ph.D. from Texas Tech University.

Stephen J. Gerras is a Professor of Behavioral Sciences in the Department of Command, Leadership, and Management at the U.S. Army War College. He served in the Army for over 25 years, including commanding a light infantry company and a transportation battalion, teaching leadership at West Point, and serving as the Chief of Operations and Agreements for the Office of Defense Cooperation in Ankara, Turkey. Colonel (Ret.) Gerras holds a B.S. from the U.S. Military Academy and an M.S. and Ph.D. in industrial and organizational psychology from Penn State University.

Endnotes

13, Ann Tenbrunsel and David M. Messick, “Ethical fading: The Role of Self-Deception in Unethical Behavior,” Social Justice Research, Vol. 17, No. 2, June 2004, p. 224. Also see Max H. Bazerman and Ann E. Tenbrunsel, Blind Spots, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011, pp. 30-31.

14. Tenbrunsel and Messick refer to such phrases as language euphemisms, 226.

15. See Albert Bandura, “Selective Moral Disengagement in the Exercise of Moral Agency,” Journal of Moral Education, 31, No. 2, 2002, pp. 101-119, for how repeated exposure leads to moral disengagement.

16. Dan Ariely, The (Honest) Truth about Dishonesty, New York: HarperCollins, 2012, p. 59.

17. Ariely, pp. 177-178.

Featured Image: PHILIPPINE SEA (Sept. 24, 2020) Sailors from Naval Beach Unit 7 man a line alongside Sailors from the amphibious transport dock ship USS New Orleans (LPD 18) during an underway replenishment. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Kelby Sanders)

This monograph was originally published by the Army War College under the title Lying To Ourselves: Dishonesty in the Army Profession and is republished with permission. Read it in its original form here. It deserves to be noted that the described themes and dynamics are not solely limited to the specific military service being examined.

By Dr. Leonard Wong and Dr. Stephen J. Gerras

Summary

While it has been fairly well established that the Army is quick to pass down requirements to individuals and units regardless of their ability to actually comply with the totality of the requirements, there has been very little discussion about how the Army culture has accommodated the deluge of demands on the force. This study found that many Army officers, after repeated exposure to the overwhelming demands and the associated need to put their honor on the line to verify compliance, have become ethically numb. As a result, an officer’s signature and word have become tools to maneuver through the Army bureaucracy rather than being symbols of integrity and honesty. Sadly, much of the deception that occurs in the profession of arms is encouraged and sanctioned by the military institution as subordinates are forced to prioritize which requirements will actually be done to standard and which will only be reported as done to standard. As a result, untruthfulness is surprisingly common in the U.S. military even though members of the profession are loath to admit it.

To address this problem, the authors point out that the first step toward changing this culture of dishonesty is acknowledging organizational and individual fallibilities. Until a candid exchange begins within the Army that includes recognition of the rampant duplicity, the current culture will not improve. The second recommendation calls for restraint in the propagation of requirements and compliance checks. Policies and directives from every level of headquarters should be analyzed in regard to their impact on the cumulative load on the force. Finally, the authors recommend that leaders at all levels must lead truthfully. At the highest levels, leading truthfully includes convincing uniformed and civilian senior leadership of the need to accept a degree of political risk in reducing requirements. At other levels, leading truthfully may include striving for 100 percent compliance in all areas, but being satisfied when only 85 percent is reported in some. The Army profession rests upon a bedrock of trust. This monograph attempts to bolster that trust by calling attention to the deleterious culture the Army has inadvertently created.

Lying To Ourselves: Dishonesty in the Army Profession

Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel recently stated that he was “deeply troubled” by the latest spate of ethical scandals across the military. His spokesman, Rear Admiral John Kirby, told a news conference, “I think he’s generally concerned that there could be, at least at some level, a breakdown in ethical behavior and in the demonstration of moral courage.” He added, “He’s concerned about the health of the force and the health of the strong culture of accountability and responsibility that Americans have come to expect from their military.”¹

Indeed, troubling indicators point to ethical and moral transgressions occurring across all levels of the military. In the Air Force, for example, nearly half of the nuclear missile launch officers at one base were involved with or knew about widespread cheating on an exam testing knowledge of the missile launch systems.² In the Navy, 30 senior enlisted instructors responsible for training sailors in the operation of nuclear reactors were suspended after a sailor alerted superiors that he had been offered answers to a written test.³ In the Army, a recent promotion board looking through the evaluations of senior noncommissioned officers (NCOs) found that raters were recording deceptively taller heights in order to keep any NCO weight gain within Army height/weight standards.⁴ Additionally, the constant drumbeat of senior officer misconduct and ethical failings have included violations ranging from lavish personal trips at government expense to hypocritical sexual transgressions.

On one hand, scandals such as these are beneficial in that they raise visibility of the critical necessity and clear expectation of honesty and integrity in the military profession. On the other hand, such scandals are detrimental not only because they erode the internal and external trust critical to the institution of the military, but also because they encourage many in the profession to sit in judgment of a few bad apples, while firmly believing that they themselves would never lie, cheat, or steal. After all, as Secretary Hagel pointed out, “the overwhelming majority of our service members are brave, upright and honest people.”⁵ Dishonesty in the military, however, lies not just with the misdeeds of a few, but with the potential for deception throughout the entire military. This monograph examines how untruthfulness is surprisingly common in the military even though members of the profession are loath to admit it.

We begin by analyzing the flood of requirements experienced by military leaders and show that the military as an institution has created an environment where it is literally impossible to execute to standard all that is required. At the same time, reporting noncompliance with the requirements is seldom a viable option. As a result, the conditions are set where subordinates and units are often forced to determine which requirements will actually be done to standard and which will only be reported as done to standard. We continue by examining the effect on individuals and analyze how ethical fading and rationalizing allow individuals to convince themselves that their honor and integrity are intact despite ethical compromise. We conclude by recommending open professional dialogue on the phenomenon, institutional restraint in the proliferation of requirements, and the acceptance of risk in leading truthfully at all levels.

This monograph is not intended to be an indictment of the military profession. Instead, the subsequent pages merely argue that the military needs to introspectively examine how it might be inadvertently abetting the very behavior it deems unacceptable. We realize, though, that engaging in such a dialogue may be awkward and uncomfortable. Because the U.S. military is simultaneously a functioning organization and a practicing profession, it takes remarkable courage for a senior leader to acknowledge the gritty shortcomings and embarrassing frailties of the military as an organization in order to better the military as a profession. Such a discussion, however, is both essential and necessary for the health of the military profession.

While the phenomenon we are addressing afflicts the entire U.S. military, we focus on the U.S. Army because it is the institution with which we are most familiar. While the military profession can be broadly conceptualized to include anyone who serves in the Department of Defense (DoD), we give particular attention to the experiences of the Army officer corps. The officer corps is a bellwether for the military because, as the Armed Forces Officer points out:

“The nation expects more from the military officer: It expects a living portrayal of the highest standards of moral and ethical behavior. The expectation is neither fair nor unfair; it is a simple fact of the profession. The future of the services and the well-being of its people depend on the public perception and fact of the honor, virtue and trustworthiness of the officer corps.”⁶

The Deluge of Requirements

This analysis began with an exploration into the avalanche of mandatory training requirements levied throughout the Army. It has been fairly well established that the Army as an institution is quick to pass down requirements to individuals and units regardless of their ability to actually comply with the totality of the requirements. In 2001, the Army Training and Leader Development Panel noted this disturbing trend:

“Much of the Army, from the most senior levels on down, no longer follows or cannot follow the Army’s training management doctrine. The doctrine, when applied to support mission focus, prioritizes tasks and locks in training far enough out to provide predictability and allocate resources. It acknowledges that units cannot do everything because there are not enough resources, especially time. Today’s Army ignores the training doctrine.”⁷

In 2002, a U.S. Army War College study tallied all the training directed at company commanders and compared that total to the available number of training days. The analysis concluded that:

“In the rush by higher headquarters to incorporate every good idea into training, the total number of training days required by all mandatory training directives literally exceeds the number of training days available to company commanders. Company commanders somehow have to fit 297 days of mandatory requirements into 256 available training days.”⁸

More recently, in 2012 the Department of the Army Inspector General (IG) examined how units were coping with the deluge of mandatory requirements involved in the Army Force Generation (ARFORGEN) process. The IG report noted:

“At none (0 of 16) of the locations inspected were companies in the ARFORGEN process able to complete all mandatory training and administrative tasks during ARFORGEN which impacts their ability to lead effectively and take care of Soldiers.”⁹

Those three reports focus on the detrimental effects on training management due to the suffocating amount of mandatory requirements imposed upon units and commanders. Commanders were said to be harried and stifled as they were inundated by directives from above. Yet these reports only obliquely address a more pernicious phenomenon emerging from a culture that demands more from the profession’s members than is possible. If units and individuals are literally unable to complete the tasks placed upon them, then reports submitted upward by leaders must be either admitting noncompliance, or they must be intentionally inaccurate. Units, however, rarely have the option to report that they have not completed the ARFORGEN pre-deployment checklist. Likewise, it is not an option for individuals to decide that they will forego sexual assault prevention training this quarter because they are too busy with other tasks. If reporting noncompliance is not an acceptable alternative because of the Army’s tendency toward zero defects, then it is important to examine the resultant institutional implications.

To examine the intersection of the Army’s unbending requirements with the force’s widespread inability to comply with every directive, we looked into the experiences of officers (and some civilians) throughout the Army. We conducted discussions with scores of officers, including captains (including some from the U.S. Marine Corps) at Fort Benning, GA, and Fort Lee, VA; staff officers on the Department of Army staff in the Pentagon, Washington, DC; majors at Fort Leavenworth, KS; and former battalion and brigade commanders at Carlisle Barracks, PA.

Discussions across the force confirm, as previous reports have noted, that the requirements passed down from above far exceed the ability of units and individuals to accomplish them. A former brigade commander bluntly described the annual training requirement situation: “It’s more than you can do in one year.”¹⁰ Another officer gave more detail: “The amount of requirements, if you laid [them] down on a calendar—all the external stuff you have to do—and then how much time you have to complete [them]— it’s physically impossible!” Another officer added his perspective:

“It’s a systemic problem throughout the entire Army . . . We can probably do two or three things in a day, but if you give us 20, we’re gonna half-ass 15 and hope you ignore the other five.”

Given that it is impossible to comply with every requirement, how do units and individuals reconcile the impossible task of accomplishing all directed training with a bureaucracy that demands confirmation that every requirement was accomplished? Do they admit noncompliance? Do they submit false reports?

Before addressing these questions, it should be noted that U.S. Army officers, and members of the military profession in general, tend to have a self-image that bristles at any hint of dishonesty. Consider that according to a recent survey completed by over 20,000 members of the Army, 93 percent of respondents believed that the Army values of loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity, and personal courage line up well with their own personal values.¹¹ This apparent self-confidence in the trustworthiness of America’s warriors is also mirrored externally by American society. Each year, the Harris Poll assesses the confidence that the U.S. public has in the leaders of major American institutions. For the past decade, military leaders have been at the top of the list, with 55 percent of Americans reporting that they have a great deal of confidence in the leaders of the military. For comparison, leaders in Congress and Wall Street garnered societal confidence of only 6 percent and 7 percent, respectively, and thus occupied positions at the other end of the spectrum.¹²

With such a strong self-image and the reinforcing perspective of a mostly adoring American society, it is not surprising that leaders in the military profession respond with indignation at any whiff of deceit concerning directed training compliance. So, it was not unexpected for discussions with officers to begin with bold declarations such as the colonel who pointed out, “Nobody was ever asked to report something as true that was not,” or the captain who emphatically stated, “I have never given a false report. Never intentionally have I said, ‘Yes, we’re 100% on this,’ when I knew we weren’t.”

After a few minutes into the discussion (usually about 20), however, hints would inevitably emerge that there was something deeper involved in the situation. For example, one senior officer reflected upon the pressures of complying with every training directive and stated, “You find ways to qualify your answer. It’s not quibbling—it’s assuming risk.” When pressed for specifics on how they managed, officers tended to dodge the issue with statements such as, “You gotta make priorities, we met the intent, or we got creative.” Eventually words and phrases such as “hand waving, fudging, massaging, or checking the box” would surface to sugarcoat the hard reality that, in order to satisfy compliance with the surfeit of directed requirements from above, officers resort to evasion and deception. In other words, in the routine performance of their duties as leaders and commanders, U.S. Army officers lie.

Once officers conceded that they did, indeed, occasionally misrepresent the truth concerning compliance with directives, admissions tended to flow more freely. One former battalion commander commented, “We’ve always pencil-whipped training.” A captain recalled a specific example of dealing with the overwhelming requirements:

“For us, it was those little tasks that had to get done when we got returned from predeployment block leave—the number of taskings went through the roof. None [by] themselves were extremely extensive—like a 15-minute online course. The problem was getting your formation to do it with the availability of computers and then the ability to print and prove that you had taken it. So I think that some of the training got lost in translation. For a nine-man squad, they would pick the smartest dude, and he would go and take it nine times for the other members of his squad and then that way they had a certificate to prove that they had completed it.”

Another captain had a similar experience:

“I had a platoon sergeant when I first became a platoon leader, and I walked into the office and he was printing out certificates with people’s names on them. I was like, “What are you doing?” He says, “Mandatory training!” It was so accepted. It’s almost like corruption. 

Honestly Confronting Dishonesty

Dishonesty, however, is not restricted just to reports of mandatory training. While the truth is often sidestepped in reporting compliance with directed requirements, dishonesty and deception are also prevalent in many other realms of the Army. Deceit can also appear in maintenance, supply, or other official reporting. For example, one captain spoke of the deception in vehicle readiness reporting:

“I sat in a log synch and they’re like, “What’s your vehicle percentage?” I said, “I’m at 90%.” [But] if [anyone] told me to move them tomorrow, [I knew] they would all break. For months and months and months we reported up “90%, Good-to-go on vehicles!”–knowing that it didn’t matter because it carried no weight. It literally was just filling a box on a slide.”

Another captain gave an example of the half-truths commonly found in property accountability:

“We had this antenna and it had a serial number, but it was a component of the antenna. . . . We would always joke that if the Army were ever audited, and you looked at everything the Army was supposed to have, it would likely have most of it. However, would it really be of value or use or would you have a piece of plastic with a serial number that counted as an antenna? . . . We weren’t lying. We met the requirement at its minimum and that’s what we sent up. We gave them what they wanted.”

Examples of deceit also emerged in a wide variety of other areas concerning compliance with directed actions. According to a senior officer, “A command inspection is required within 90 days of company command. People don’t do it. They make it up.” One colonel spoke of inaccurate reporting following an undesirable directive: “We were asked to go to off-post housing to check on soldier quality of life. Folks were uncomfortable going so they pencil-whipped it.” In the words of another senior officer, “We have levied [on us] so many information demands that we infer that if I’m not asked specifics, they really don’t care. So I’ll just report ambiguous info.”

An officer related his experience with the Travel Risk Planning System (TRiPS) form required for soldiers going on leave or pass:

“A soldier dying on vacation because of sleep deprivation is a horrible loss. So it is absolutely something we need to mitigate. However the focus for pretty much damn [near] every soldier is, ‘Hey, I just need to get this done so I can get my leave form in and get it approved.’ So what do you do? You know what answers the survey wants. You click those answers. And it’s sad, but it’s the way it works.”

Another common (and innocuous) form of deceit in the U.S. Army officer corps concerns the evaluation reporting system. The dishonesty occurs not in the actual prose of the Officer Evaluation Report (OER)/ NCO Evaluation Report (NCOER) (although an analysis of the over-the-top hyperbole in evaluations would make an interesting study), but rather with the associated OER/NCOER Support Form. Army Regulation 623-3, Evaluation Reporting System, states that a rater must conduct an initial counseling with the rated officer/NCO within the first 30 days of the rating period, followed by additional counseling sessions every quarter. To verify compliance with this directive, the rated officer/NCO, the rater, and the senior rater must initial—or on the newest version, digitally sign—the support form.

It is the exception, not the rule, that the face-to-face counseling mandated by the regulation and verified by three members of the chain of command ever occurs. While initial counseling sessions may have a chance of being accomplished, compliance with the quarterly counseling requirement is extremely rare. Yet each year, tens of thousands of support forms are submitted with untruthful information. Interestingly, fabricating dates that the directed counseling supposedly took place is both expected and unremarkable (as long as the contrived dates do not fall on a weekend). To the average officer, it is the way business is done in the Army. Admitting that the counseling did not take place is very seldom an option. In the words of a major, “The Army would rather us make up dates saying, ‘Yes, we did it’ as opposed to saying, ‘Hey, I messed up.’”

With such widespread evidence that Army individuals and units are surrounded by a culture where deceptive information is both accepted and commonplace, we sought to examine the situation from the perspective of those who receive the flawed information. Are the recipients of the data and reports aware that the information provided to them may not be accurate? We looked to the views of civilians and officers serving on the Department of the Army staff in the Pentagon for some insights. Discussions revealed that most Army staff officers recognize that much of the data provided to them is imprecise.

When asked if units are submitting inaccurate data, one staff officer bluntly replied, “Sure, I used to do it when I was down there.” Another staff officer added, “Nobody believes the data; [senior leaders] take it with a grain of salt . . . The data isn’t valued, probably because they know the data isn’t accurate.” Another clarified, “Everyone does the best they can, but we know the data is wrong.” One officer summed up the situation, “We don’t trust our compliance data. There’s no system to track it. If we frame something as compliance, people ‘check the block.’ They will quibble and the Army staff knows it.”

Likewise, most former battalion commanders admitted that, in their roles as data receivers, many of the slides briefed to them showing 100 percent compliance or the responses given them for information requests were probably too optimistic or inaccurate. For example, one colonel described how his brigade commander needed to turn in his situation report on Friday, forcing the battalions to do theirs on Thursday, and therefore the companies submitted their data on Wednesday—necessitating the companies to describe events that had not even occurred yet. The end result was that, while the companies gave it their best shot, everyone including the battalion commander knew that the company reports were not accurate.

Meanwhile, officers at all levels admit to occasionally feeding the Army institution information that— although it is “what they want to hear”—is not totally honest. As a result, it appears that a peculiar situation emerges where both those requesting information and those supplying it know that the information is questionable. Despite the existence of this mutually agreed deception, all concerned are content to sanction and support the illusion that all is well. In the words of one Department of the Army staff officer, “The façade goes all the way up.” The façade allows the Army to continue functioning—slides are briefed as green, compliance is shown to be almost always 100 percent, and queries from Congress, DoD, or higher headquarters are answered on time.

Read Part Two.

Leonard Wong is a research professor in the Strategic Studies Institute at the U.S. Army War College. He focuses on the human and organizational dimensions of the military. He is a retired Army officer whose career includes teaching leadership at West Point and serving as an analyst for the Chief of Staff of the Army. His research has led him to locations such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Kosovo, Bosnia, and Vietnam. He has testified before Congress. Dr. Wong’s work has been highlighted in news media such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, New Yorker, CNN, NPR, PBS, and 60 Minutes. Dr. Wong is a professional engineer and holds a B.S. from the U.S. Military Academy and an M.S. and Ph.D. from Texas Tech University.

Stephen J. Gerras is a Professor of Behavioral Sciences in the Department of Command, Leadership, and Management at the U.S. Army War College. He served in the Army for over 25 years, including commanding a light infantry company and a transportation battalion, teaching leadership at West Point, and serving as the Chief of Operations and Agreements for the Office of Defense Cooperation in Ankara, Turkey. Colonel (Ret.) Gerras holds a B.S. from the U.S. Military Academy and an M.S. and Ph.D. in industrial and organizational psychology from Penn State University.

Endnotes

1. Rear Admiral John Kirby, Department of Defense Press Briefing, February 5, 2014, available from defense.gov/ transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid=5367.

2. Helene Cooper, “Air Force Fires 9 Officers in Scandal Over Cheating on Proficiency Tests,” The New York Times, March 27, 2014, available from nytimes.com/2014/03/28/us/air-force-fires- 9-officers-accused-in-cheating-scandal.html?_r=0. (Correction: February 20, 2015. A previous version mistakenly stated that half of the missile crews in the Air Force were involved in the cheating scandal. The scandal involved half of the missile crews at one base.)

3. David S. Cloud, “Navy Investigating a Cheating Scandal of Its Own,” Los Angeles Times, February 4, 2014, available from latimes.com/nation/la-na-military-problems-20140205,0,441554. story#axzz2seN1PiPZ.

4. Jim Tice, “Too many overweight soldiers,” Army Times, August 25, 2014, pp. 18-19.

5. Kirby

6. Departments of Defense, Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps, Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2, The Armed Forces Officer, Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1988, p. 2, available from apd.army.mil/pdffiles/p600_2.pdf.

7. Headquarters, Department of the Army, “The Army Training and Leader Development Panel Officer Study Report to the Army,” Washington, DC: Department of the Army, June 2001, 2-9.

8. Leonard Wong, Stifling Innovation: Developing Tomorrow’s Leaders Today, Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, 2002.

9. Department of the Army Inspector General Report, Disciplined Leadership and Company Administrative Requirements Inspection, Washington, DC: Department of the Army, Office of the Inspector General,

10. Unless otherwise noted, quotations are from discussions held by the authors with officers and civilians.

11. Department of the Army, Army Profession Campaign CY11 Report, Volume II, Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, January 20, 2012, p.

12. “Confidence in Congress Stays at Lowest Point in Almost Fifty Years,” Harris Interactive, May 21, 2012, available from harrisinteractive.com/NewsRoom/HarrisPolls/tabid/447/mid/1508/ articleId/1068/ctl/ReadCustom%20Default/Default.aspx.

Featured Image: (Feb. 14, 2022) Sailors man the rails aboard the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson (CVN 70) as the ship returns to San Diego, Feb. 14, 2022. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Leon Vonguyen)

By Scott Humr

Eroding U.S. military advantage coupled with a deluge of advanced technologies flooding the strategic landscape have forced Sea Service leaders to seek the ever diminishing high ground of technological overmatch. Yet, the pursuit of bleeding-edge technologies only provides a fleeting reprieve from having to ascend the next high-tech promontory. While pursuing the latest technologies is necessary, it is not sufficient to keep American military heads above water for very long. 

The U.S. military’s technological advantage has eroded rapidly.¹ While technology is always changing, it is changing at an accelerating pace.² A fourth and fifth offset will likely follow DoD’s third offset strategy in the not-too-distant future.³ These offsets, like those of the past, will increase the range and deadliness of American technologies. Yet, increasingly remote warfare will require equally important changes within Sea Service culture. Naval concepts such as Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations (EABO), Littoral Operations in a Contested Environment (LOCE), and “inside force” will require a naval culture characterized by highly innovative and resilient personnel.⁴ To chart this future, the Sea Services must disregard conventional habits, determine clear metrics for change, deepen educational opportunities, and develop a collective consciousness which unites disparate warfare areas.

Practices to Jettison

Practices accumulated over the past 25 years within the Sea Services will weigh down proposed warfighting concepts and threaten to capsize efforts for change. From organizational technology to processes, these artifacts can lend clues towards understanding the current culture’s values.⁵ Conversely, practices and equipment influence the conduct of warfare, which also shape culture.⁶ Understanding this reinforcing construct provides better insight into correctly diagnosing cultural values. Just as ancient mariners would jettison cargo to stabilize their ship caught in rough seas, the Sea Services must discard practices and behaviors that burden efforts to operate effectively in the future.

Navy and Marine Corps Force Design concepts require embracing warfighting practices that place personnel in spartan locations with minimal contact for extended periods of time.⁷ Therefore, servicemembers cannot expect the same creature comforts afforded over the last 20 years of operations in Southwest Asia. Frequent connectivity to family or streaming content over camp-wide Wi-Fi would offer opportunities for a technologically advanced adversary to sense and target such locations.⁸ Standard operating procedures that require regular reporting or unremitting requests for information exchange will require adaptation or elimination to limit exposure. 

American habits for employing increasing amounts of technology over the last quarter century have also created a complexity burden that is difficult to sustain. For this reason, it has become quite normal to expect a bevy of contractors to buttress communication networks and software to support logistics and security.⁹ However, naval leadership should not count on this type of help in the future. Standard support personnel will have to become multiskilled to keep manpower requirements below an acceptable threshold.¹⁰ Parallel to how the Marine Corps is evaluating the consolidation of several infantry MOSs into a single “commando MOS,”¹¹ the Sea Services must look to do the same across support functions to achieve the efficiencies the Naval Services demand. 

Operating in a distributed maritime environment requires a reinvigoration of the ability to thrive in austerity. The previous experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan have bred mindsets habituated to expect uninterrupted and timely logistics support. Future logistics operations will, however, need to be reconceived when support is contested in remote locations.¹² Where feasible, EABOs will need to become networks of lateral support to each other for greater responsiveness. Only by fostering a culture of radical self-sufficiency and diversifying logistics sustainment can the Sea Services realistically maintain distributed operations. Still, habits that continue to emphasize strict hierarchies of command and control with extensive approval chains will also need to evolve to support an agile network of EABOs.

In his book, Command: The Twenty-First-Century General, Anthony King aptly stated, “Existing command models, derived from the twentieth century, have become increasingly obsolete in the face of new global problems.”¹³ Indeed, command models that prevent maneuver warfare from the sea must be transformed. Operations that once allowed for clear separation of duties between a Commander Amphibious Task Force (CATF) and Commander Landing Force (CLF) will not likely apply well in a future characterized by multi-domain operations (MDO).¹⁴ For example, the concept of “green in support of blue” in defense of the amphibious task force and “blue in support of green” once a preponderance of forces are ashore will become amorphous under EABO. Supporting and supported roles will become fluid and complex requiring quick decision making and authorities better suited for a single commander. To guide this change, the Sea Services should experiment with combining both CATF and CLF roles under Composite Warfare Commanders (CWC). 

The CWC under the single battle concept would allow for seamless decision making and deconfliction within a battle space. Analogous to how Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) operated under the leadership of General Stanly McCrystal in Iraq, the Sea Services must push authority to CWCs to operate faster than the adversary.¹⁵ Multiple CWCs could operate under a single, but agile Commander Amphibious Force (CAF). The CAF would function as the officer in tactical command who organizes CWCs and subordinate warfare commanders.¹⁶ The CAF could also deconflict requirements for strategic and low-density assets within the area of operations. 

In short, the Sea Services must forgo the previous separation between the CATF and CLF while adopting a more comprehensive and agile view of CWCs to support EABO, LOCE, and other MDO at sea. Such fundamental changes will require even greater naval integration than previously sought. However, greater integration must go beyond exchanging a few liaison officers and calling it a win. Rather, Sea Service leadership must develop meaningful measurements of naval integration which can radically strengthen our common culture.

Measuring Change: Integration by Subtraction

War is a human phenomenon and how a force fights can be viewed as an extension of its culture.¹⁷ Developing closer bonds amongst the Sea Services in the future will become significant towards developing this culture. The Sea Services must therefore cast off from the shores of Service parochialism to embrace even greater integration. To be sure, developing clear metrics for measuring unit integration and capturing feedback from personnel will help shape the naval culture to compete effectively. 

The 2018 National Defense Strategy and derivative Sea Service guidance, such as the Tri-Service strategy, Advantage at Sea, are orienting efforts towards a future that necessitates greater Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard integration. A novel measurement for greater Navy and Marine Corps integration is the total number of commands eliminated—or addition by subtraction.¹⁸ For instance, Commander, Marine Forces Pacific could become the Deputy Commander of U.S. 7th Fleet. 7th Fleet could also create a standing Combined Task Force (CTF) composed of Navy and Marine personnel similar to 5th Marine Expeditionary Brigade to oversee multiple Marine Littoral Regiments.¹⁹ Correspondingly, Commander, Marine Forces CENTCOM (MARCENT) could become the deputy Commander, U.S. 5th Fleet with headquarters in Tampa, FL. While this could reduce several Marine Commands to a two-star level it has the greater benefit of increasing naval integration and reducing staff manpower levels for both services. 

Important feedback for measuring cultural change within the Sea Services will also come from deck-plate leadership. The Services need to implement 360-degree feedback for all leaders. Such multi-source feedback can provide the valuable information needed to improve naval leadership, and by extension—culture. 360-degree assessments accomplish this by helping to identify leadership blind spots and allow meaningful corrections to be made quickly. Waiting for the results of episodic command climate surveys are no longer sufficient. This comprehensive feedback process could help empower junior leaders with the necessary candor to improve command climate almost immediately. More importantly, it will foster greater lateral cooperation amongst peers over current models that incentivize peer competition.²⁰ 360-degree feedback will allow the Sea Services to continually take the proper depth soundings of their cultures by identifying the best leaders and to avoid running the Sea Service ship aground on the hidden reefs of toxic leadership. 

Educating for Cultural Change

Any successful cultural transformation requires changes to how forces are educated and trained. While Advantage at Sea properly advocates for “collaborat[ing] with allies and partners to increase exchange opportunities, including education, shore-based tours, and operational billets,” further inspection of how education is delivered is required to increase educational reach across naval institutions.²¹ The COVID-19 pandemic has shown that significant amounts of work and education can be accomplished remotely across time zones and mediums. For example, uprooting families for a six-to-ten-month long school only to move them again is not only wasteful but in many cases is completely unnecessary. Asynchronous educational opportunities are also an attractive option to provide education to more personnel who otherwise would never benefit from it. These delivery methods have the added benefit of affording military families, such as spouses who have professional careers, greater stability by allowing them to stay in a location longer.²²

Equally important, the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps should jointly develop a comprehensive composite warfare commander’s course which officers from both services could attend. As mentioned above, EABO and LOCE will blur the lines between the CATF and CLF, necessitating the need to envision operations more holistically. CWCs will undoubtedly need a wide-ranging appreciation of both Marine and Navy capabilities as well as Joint Force assets. Just as all naval aviators wear a breast insignia designating their specialty, CWC school graduates, including Marines, could one day adopt a new warfare insignia designating them as CWCs. Yet, warfare cultures with unique distinctions and histories can create headwinds that buffet our progress towards change. It will therefore be important for all leaders within the Sea Services to provide the comprehensive vision for how each servicemember plays a part in delivering warfighting capabilities at sea. 

A Common Culture 

 Major organizational change can often run up against resistance.²³ Threats to relevancy in a future fight, budget cuts, or the evolution of roles can trigger a “survival instinct” where subcultures rally against or attempt to slow-roll changes.²⁴ Indeed, loss aversion bias and sunk costs are a well-documented phenomenon regularly used to maintain the status quo.²⁵ To avoid these pitfalls, it is important to fashion disparate warfare cultures into plank owners of a more integrated naval service culture. 

The Sea Services must develop a common culture characterized by a shared consciousness.²⁶ Drawing lessons from Team of Teams, future warfighting concepts must pair the best qualities of each warfare area to elicit the best outcomes.²⁷ For instance, General Stanley McCrystal was able to help create a cohesive environment for JSOC personnel, interagency organizations, military intelligence, and other disparate entities to collaborate effectively.²⁸ This allowed the various groups to not only adapt to changing intelligence faster, but also increased the operational tempo to out-cycle the enemy.²⁹ If the Sea Services are to achieve analogous efficiencies, they will require integrated training and formations that exist on a standing basis. For instance, it is rare for a typical Marine infantry unit to train with U.S. Navy sub-surface units. However, if Sea Service leadership expects units to cooperate on anti-submarine warfare (ASW), developing exercises and shared understanding for how such dissimilar units can create a symbiotic relationship is essential.³⁰ Except, such training comes at a cost. Sea Service leaders must also declare which training is no longer essential—something the services rarely do well. Warfare areas will adapt and work together when they are unfettered from non-essential training and given a credible vision for the future. It is therefore incumbent upon Sea Service leadership to clear paths for innovation at the lowest levels while also making it clear what requirements will be eliminated to create the time and space needed to meet these visions of operating together. 

Hold fast…

Calling for significant changes within a culture while implementing new practices is not without its difficulties. Many may affirm that the current culture is sufficient for this new era and change may be more detrimental to the institution overall.³¹ Radical change can in fact disturb the standard processes that many have become accustomed to as they provide predictability and stability. Balancing exploitation and exploration are often areas that can come into conflict with each other when resources and time are scarce. Refining and altering processes are often needed to remain competitive. Organizations, however, can often become disillusioned and jaded by change, especially if leadership is constantly chasing and trying to shoehorn the latest technology fad into current practices. Yet, stagnation and comfortability also breed complacency within an organization. Hence, the value of good leadership in determining the right path is crucial in getting the organization to row in the same direction.

The rise of an adversarial China and Russia who violate norms of the international system demand the Sea Services pursue significant change to stem the tide of belligerent activities. Such behaviors in the South China Sea (SCS) by China, for instance, threaten the economic resources of surrounding countries through overfishing and causing catastrophic ecological damage to reefs through their dredging operations.³² Chinese construction of military outposts in the SCS not only violates the sovereignty of other nations, but also threatens freedom of navigation of all nations.³³ Additionally, Chinese Maritime Militia, or “little blue men,”³⁴ could become the equivalent of the “little green men” who helped conduct a fait accompli in Russia’s annexation of Crimea.³⁵

Unprofessional behavior by the Russian Navy further exacerbates tensions and places American front line leaders in precarious situations that could escalate into an unnecessary conflict.³⁶ Operating below the threshold of war has become the norm and therefore requires new approaches for where and how forces are postured to create credible deterrence. The Sea Services must pursue significant changes to develop a more integrated culture that is able to create new cost impositions for adversarial nations.³⁷

Conclusion

The COVID-19 pandemic has shown that the services can respond and change quickly. Additionally, Sea Service leaders such as the Commandant of the Marine Corps, General David H. Berger, have demonstrated the ability to rapidly shape the future force without direct permissions from Congress.³⁸Equal boldness is required to sunset bad habits and adopt better metrics to shape the culture of the naval force. Still, the Sea Services must conduct rigorous innovation and experimentation with new force design constructs and command relationships that will support efforts to outpace any enemy.³⁹ These achievements, however, will only be sustained by lashing the sails to the strong masts of the type of education that can meet the demands of a 21st century military. 

The tsunami of technologies submerging the battlefields of the 21st century is unrelenting. Military technological advantages will ebb and flow. Regardless of the technology, if the culture is not prepared to use it to its advantage, much will be for naught. A truly integrated naval culture will catalyze decision cycles to attain a network of kill chains.⁴⁰ Culture is at the helm of this ship and it’s the job of all Sea Service leaders to help steer it.

LtCol Scott Humr, USMC, is a student at the Naval Postgraduate School studying Information Sciences. He holds a Master’s in Military Studies from the Marine Corps University and a Master’s in Information Technology from the Naval Postgraduate School. His views are his own and do not necessarily represent the official views of the DoD or the government departments he is associated with.

Endnotes

[1] Krepinevich, Andrew F., Jr. “Finding Strength in Decline.” Foreign Affairs. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2020-12-10/finding-strength-decline. 

[2] Berman, Alison E. and Jason Dorrier. “Technology Feels Like It’s Accelerating — Because It Actually Is.” last modified March 22, 2016. https://singularityhub.com/2016/03/22/technology-feels-like-its-accelerating-because-it-actually-is/. 

[3] Kassinger, Theodore W. “Shaping the Fourth Offset.” last modified August 13, 2020, https://www.cnas.org/publications/commentary/shaping-the-fourth-offset-the-emerging-role-of-export-controls-in-pursuit-of-national-economic-self-reliance. 

[4] Greer, Tanner. “The Tip of the American Military Spear Is Being Blunted.” last modified July 6, 2020. https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/07/06/us-marines-strategy-military-tip-spear-china-congress/. 

[5] Schein, Edgar H. Organizational culture and leadership. Vol. 2. John Wiley & Sons, 2010.

[6] Mahnken, Thomas G. Technology and the American Way of War since 1945. Columbia University Press, 2010.

[7] Berger, Gen David H. “Commandant’s Planning Guidance.” (Washington, DC: U.S. Marine Corps, 2019). 

[8] Kerg, Maj Brian. “To Be Detected Is To Be Killed,” USNI Proceedings, Vol. 146/12/1,414, https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2020/december/be-detected-be-killed. 

[9] Avant, Deborah D., and Renee De Nevers. “Military contractors & the American way of war.” Daedalus 140, no. 3 (2011): 88-99.

[10] Berger, David H. “A concept for stand-in forces.” USNI Proceedings, Vol 147/11/1,425, https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2021/november/concept-stand-forces. 

[11] Harkins, Gina. “The Marine Corps Is Considering Merging All Infantry Jobs Into Just 1 MOS.” https://www.military.com/daily-news/2020/12/03/marine-corps-considering-merging-all-infantry-jobs-just-1-mos.html. 

[12] Mills, Capt Walker D., and Erik Limpaecher. “Sustainment Will Be Contested.” USNI Proceedings, Vol. 146/11/1,413, https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2020/november/sustainment-will-be-contested.

[13] King, Anthony. Command: The Twenty-First-Century General. Cambridge University Press, 2019, 9.

[14] Nostro, Mark. Command and Control in Littoral Operations. Naval War College Newport, RI, United States, 2016, https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/AD1021504.

[15] United States Marine Corps, MCDP 1-4 Competing. https://www.marines.mil/News/Publications/MCPEL/Electronic-Library-Display/Article/2449338/mcdp-1-4/.

[16] Department of Defense. Joint Publication 3-02 Amphibious Operations, https://www.jcs.mil/Portals/36/Documents/Doctrine/pubs/jp3_02.pdf, xiv.

[17] Coker, Christopher. Waging war without warriors?: The changing culture of military conflict. Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2002.

[18] Janssen, Jeff. “7 Times When ‘Addition by Subtraction’ Might Add Up for Your Team.” https://www.championshipcoachesnetwork.com/public/399.cfm#:~:text=%22Addition%20by%20Subtraction%22%20is%20a,with%20or%20inhibiting%20your%20success. 

[19] Axe, David. “Meet Your New Island-Hopping, Missile-Slinging U.S. Marine Corps.” Forbes. Last modified May 14, 2020. https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2020/05/14/meet-your-new-island-hopping-missile-slinging-us-marine-corps/?sh=62b672f08dae. 

[20] Jackson, Kimberly, Katherine L. Kidder, Sean Mann, William H. Waggy II, Natasha Lander, and S. Rebecca Zimmerman, Raising the Flag: Implications of U.S. Military Approaches to General and Flag Officer Development. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2020. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR4347.html, 104.

[21] Ryan, Mick. “The Intellectual Edge: A Competitive Advantage for Future War and Strategic Competition.” Joint Forces Quarterly, 96 1st Quarter 2020, https://ndupress.ndu.edu/Portals/68/Documents/jfq/jfq-96/JFQ-96_6-11_Ryan.pdf?ver=2020-02-07-150501-867. 

[22] Burke, Jeremy and Amalia Miller. “The Effects of Military Change-of-Station Moves on Spousal Earnings.” RAND Corporation. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2016. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB9920.html. 

[23] Kotter, John P., and Leonard A. Schlesinger. Choosing strategies for change. Harvard Business Review, 1979.

[24] Holmes, James, “The U.S. Marine Corps Wants A Generation Of Free Thinkers.” Last modified December 20 , 2020. https://www.19fortyfive.com/2020/12/the-u-s-marine-corps-wants-a-generation-of-free-thinkers/. 

[25] Levy, Jack S. “Loss Aversion, Framing, and Bargaining: The Implications of Prospect Theory for International Conflict.” International Political Science Review / Revue Internationale De Science Politique 17, no. 2 (1996): 179-95. Accessed December 28, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1601302.

[26] McChrystal, Gen Stanley, Tantum Collins, David Silverman, and Chris Fussell. Team of Teams: New rules of engagement for a complex world. Penguin, 2015.

[27] McChrystal, et. al,. Team of Teams.

[28] McChrystal, et. al,. Team of Teams, 162.

[29] McChrystal, et. al,. Team of Teams, 218.

[30] Eckstein, Megan. “CMC Berger Outlines How Marines Could Fight Submarines in the Future.” USNI News, September 8, 2020,  https://news.usni.org/2020/12/08/cmc-berger-outlines-how-marines-could-fight-submarines-in-the-future.  

[31] Athey, Philip. “Steely Eyed Killers No More: What Will the Corps’ Culture Look like under the New Force Design?.” Marine Corps Times, September 18, 2020, https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/your-marine-corps/2020/09/18/passive-defenders-orsteely-eyed-killers-what-will-the-corps-culture-look-like-under-new-force-design/. 

[32] Carroll, Clint. “Protecting the South China Sea.” Foreign Affairs.” Last modified June 9, 2017. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2017-06-09/protecting-south-china-sea. 

[33] Rapp-Hooper, Maria. “Confronting China in the South China Sea.” Foreign Affairs. Last modified February 8, 2016. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2016-02-08/confronting-china-south-china-sea. 

[34] Makocki, Michal, and Nicu Popescu. China and Russia: An Eastern Partnership in the Making? European Union Institute for Security Studies (EUISS), 2016. 9-18. Accessed December 23, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep06942.5. 

[35] “‘Little Green Men:’ a primer on Modern Russian Unconventional Warfare, Ukraine 2013-2014.” The United States Army Special Operations Command Fort Bragg, North Carolina. https://www.jhuapl.edu/Content/documents/ARIS_LittleGreenMen.pdf.

[36] Schemm, Paul and Paul Sonne. “Near-collision between U.S. and Russian warships in Pacific requires emergency maneuvers.” The Washington Post. Last modified June 7, 2019. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/near-collision-between-us-and-russian-warships-in-pacific-require-emergency-maneuvers/2019/06/07/fa4d036e-890e-11e9-a870-b9c411dc4312_story.html. 

[37] Mahnken, Thomas G. “Cost-Imposing Strategies: A Brief Primer.” Last modified November 18, 2014. https://www.cnas.org/publications/reports/cost-imposing-strategies-a-brief-primer. 

[38] Richmond, Gordon. “The Marines and America’s Special Operators: More Collaboration Required.” Last modified December 29, 2020. https://warontherocks.com/2020/12/the-marines-and-americas-special-operators-more-collaboration-required/. 

[39] McGee, Captain Will. “Testing Force Design,” USNI Proceedings, Vol. 146/11/1,413, https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2020/november/testing-force-design. 

[40] Brose, Christian. The Kill Chain: Defending America in the future of high-tech warfare, Hachette UK, 2020. 

Featured Image: An F-35B Lightning II fighter aircraft assigned to the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit takes off from the flight deck of amphibious assault ship USS America (LHA 6) in support of Exercise Cobra Gold 2020. (U.S. Navy photo)